A number of us who are concerned about civility on Wikipedia do not see
swearing in and of itself as uncivil. Many people may include
professionalism and decorum under the umbrella of civility, but others do
not, and they are not hypocritical because they do not. The problem is
not the words themselves, but when those words are used by editors to
attack other editors.
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 7:08 PM, Daniel and Elizabeth Case <
dancase(a)frontiernet.net> wrote:
In any case, it
seems like it has long been settled that the general use
of profanity on Wikipedia
is accepted but not celebrated. Only in >extreme
cases is it considered actionable when *actually directed at an
individual*. So it's hard to understand why many editors of long->tenure
have reacted in such a strongly negative manner to this op-ed; it may be
the unique nature of the Signpost, but like Gamaliel I >would be surprised
to learn that many users regard the Signpost in the same way devotees do
the New York Times. The most likely >conclusion is that profanity and
vulgar language are almost exclusively deployed by men on Wikipedia, and
the difference here is that >readers were shocked --shocked!-- to read it
from a woman.
While I think this has something to do with it, I suspect some of the
commentators may have seen this as hypocritical: A member of the
Arbitration Committee, newly elected as one of several arbs committed to
restoring civility and mitigating our gender imbalance, writes a Signpost
op-ed using profanity in the headline, while some users (and, more
importantly, their supporters) who believe (whether reasonably or not does
not matter as the belief informs their actions either way) that last year’s
ArbCom results effectively painted a bullseye on their backs, know that use
of such language by them in discussions is routinely hauled out as evidence
against them in AN/I threads and (more importantly) at ArbCom.
I don’t fault the Signpost for its editorial decision to run it. But I
wonder if someone should have talked to Emily about this before she did it.
Because now it’ll be hard for her to cast votes in cases where a user’s
profanity has been brought up as evidence of consistent incivility without
a whole host of users bringing this up immediately on the talk page. It
will haunt her effectiveness as an Arb for a long time to come, I’m afraid.
And for what it’s worth, it is not acceptable to curse onwiki where I have
anything to say about it. I have blocked people for this when they have
refused to cease and desist and/or apologize. I have declined unblock
requests without review of the edit history if people used foul language
(this usually results in a new request with a profuse apology and more
reasonably stated case for unblock).
Daniel Case
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